1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for managing copying machines and, more particularly to, a system for centralizing information about the state of each copying machine on an external management apparatus connected thereto through a communication line to thereby manage each of the copying machines.
2. Description of the Related Art
The maintenance and management of copying machines have heretofore been carried out by causing a serviceman to call on a user at regular intervals. Further, when a problem occurs in the copying machine, the maintenance service or work was effected by causing the serviceman to call on the user based on a phone connection or the like made by the user. It was therefore necessary to dispatch servicemen for the maintenance and management of each copying machine. Further, a lot of time was required to cope with the occurrence of the problem. To overcome such inconvenience, there has been proposed a management system wherein, in order to efficiently maintain and manage each copying machine, a copying machine provided on each user side is electrically connected to a management apparatus in a service station via a communication line so that the state of each copying machine provided on the user side is always monitored by the service station, thereby systematically and efficiently effecting the maintenance work (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Sho 54-44522).
In this type of management system, when a problem occurs in one copying machine provided on the user side, the serviceman is immediately dispatched to solve the problem. When, at this time, the serviceman performs a test for reproducing the state of the problem to find the cause of the problem, the state of each of the problem occurring during that test are also sent to the management apparatus in the service station through the communication line, so that its state is inputted to a management recording file of a corresponding copying machine. That is, where the number of times at which problems have occurred for each month, is recorded in a management recording file, for example, even the problems occurring during the test are recorded as the number of times at which problem occurred. However, the problems caused during this test correspond to data not to be originally recorded. Thus, such troubles are apt to interfere with the accurate management of each copying machine. Further, the service station involves a possibility of inconvenience that it dispatches the serviceman to the user without knowing that the problems are those caused during the test.